Welfare State

[anubisa]

Re: Welfare State

I'm receiving checks from Social Security and Disability. I also receive SNAP and Medicaid. I appreciate it so much. I have epilepsy and some other disabilities. However, I really want to go back to work. I can't go back to work until I have been 6 months without a seizure or drive as well. I think that people who use the system should really be denied. The system should do more of a check on the people who it accepts, because those people who use the system don't deserve the money they get.

[Luce]

Re: Welfare State

I personally believe welfare has been used way too much especially for people who don't really deserve it. I think welfare makes people too dependent on the government and we the people, should be independent when we live our lives. What do you think? Because I believe welfare shouldn't be used or at least only used for people that actually need it because I know people end up losing their jobs and have bad luck but I don't think one should get it if they get a higher pay check the more a family has kids.

Well, isn't that nice.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Welfare State

A lot of you reading my posts over the years have probably guessed by now that I am a raving Welsh socialist, and fully paid up member of the awkward brigade when it comes to political matters. No political party can be sure of my vote - they have to earn it. But one thing I know for sure - we do not help the poor by giving tax breaks to the rich. It's the same idea that the poor will have enough to eat because the rich will have some crumbs left over. They don't - they stash it.

Everyone is just a heartbeat away from disability - a car crash, a sudden heart attack or stroke, a virus, accident on holiday or a slip on the stairs. Everyone is at risk of losing their job - a sudden downturn, council cutbacks and so on.

We none of us can be or should try and be independent. As John Donne once memorably said, 'No man is an island, entire of itself.'

The world might be a better more compassionate place if we remembered that.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Welfare State

I am a great believer in Social Security as it used to be called over here in the UK. You can tell a lot about a society in the way it treats its children, the poor, the sick and those without work.

Why should we be independent? Don't you stop to help others when they're down? Don't you try and do something for those who cannot help themselves?

Those who are unable to work should be helped. Those who can work should be helped to find work. Those who are sick should be helped. Children have a right to expect a decent standard of living, regardless of how many there are in a family - are we seriously going to punish them because of numbers? Because - with an ageing population in the west - we are going to be glad of those children to support us, one day. They may be our nurses, carers, bus drivers, police etc.

If there is money for the endless wars and military interventions, then there is - in my opinion anyway - sure as hell enough money to support those who need it.

I couldn't agree more.

To add to that, I've had some degree of experience with welfare; not personally (luckily), but I've known a lot of people who have received welfare at some point in their lives (including family members), have known people who have worked for the welfare system in various countries (including family members, some of whom were actually recipients before they got those jobs), and have read a lot into the issue. Research into welfare tends to get complicated. A lot of data points to the fact that -most- people would prefer not to receive it and would rather have meaningful work in their lives. Where it gets complicated is when people feel they don't have other choices (as is often seen in the UK, but also exists here in Germany), where it becomes generational (a third generation is born on welfare and sees that as their only lot in life), or when work conditions and pay gets so crappy that people would just rather not bother (we see this often in the mini-job culture here in Germany...why even bother when you can't earn enough to pay your basic expenses and will need to be on welfare anyway? Around 1/3 of welfare recipients here in Germany already work). Cutting welfare is NOT the answer to solving any of these problems. Solving them involves funding towards training and community outreach programs (which are slowly gaining success here in Germany) and improving pay and workers rights (I think this is where unionization needs to make a comeback, personally, though regulation can also be a big help).

It bothers me that in many cases, critics of welfare systems are also critics of higher minimum wages. I see this a lot here in Germany, but also in the US, Canada, and the UK. You don't want people on welfare? Fine. Pay them enough and give them enough benefits so that they don't have to be on welfare, or better yet, make working conditions good enough that working is clearly the better alternative. Why should the state have to subsidize low wages for crappy jobs? On top of that, why would you work at a crappy, back-breaking cleaning job when you can't even earn enough to pay your basic costs and would need to receive state benefits anyway?

I do support placing check and balances in the welfare system to ensure that recipients are actively looking for work, as some people do tend to try to game the system, but I don't think that the majority of recipients are gamers (speaking from knowing recipients, knowing people who work in welfare systems in various countries, and looking at data on welfare). I also think that checks and balances have the added effect of giving support to people who may not know where to start in looking for a job or getting job training.

Poverty carries a huge social cost. It sucks up tax dollars in a lot of other ways (crime, etc) and I don't think allowing people to slip into poverty is a good solution. On top of that, poor people cannot contribute to a healthy economy (they can't spend money). Yes, giving the poor assistance costs money, but I think it beats the alternative. Without assistance, poor people often stay poor for generations and those who are desperate often take desperate measures to get by. Is that what we want?

- - - Updated - - -

In the UK it's an unhappy fact that many of the people on benefits and who have to use foodbanks are actually hard-working and IN WORK.

Also there are those who were hard working and in work when their children were born and then - wham! Because all of us are only a heart beat away from disability, unemployment and everything associated therewith.

Part of the problem is that wages are too low. The disabled are discriminated against in finding work - yes, ikumilover90 you might say you would still work if you had a disability but what if nobody wanted to employ you? What if there were - quite literally - no jobs?

Yep. And to add to that, what if you were an immigrant who came to your new country to make a better life for yourself and found that no one would hire you. And what if your parents were immigrants and you found that no one would hire you in your own country of birth because you had a foreign-sounding last name, had a different skin color, or wore a headscarf? What if you were a woman in a country that still discriminates against women to a certain degree? These are problems we are facing here still. I don't think they are exclusive to Germany either.

- - - Updated - - -

What we disagree on is HOW to help them. To sum it up very crudely, one side wants to help by giving them money (theory: they need food and shelter now), the other side wants to help by giving them jobs (theory: they need to have a future).

One side tries to support the poor by giving them money, the other gives incentives to business to expand and employ more people. Most people are rational enough to see they need both, and fall somewhere in between. They tend to favor a mixed bag - although government incentives to business aren't well understood, so these have been demonized.

This isn't exclusive to the US. A lot of people in a lot of countries think along these lines. It kind of bothers me, to be honest, because I don't see why the two have to be mutually exclusive. I know that there are limited funds in a government, but if you can successfully get more people working, taking both measures pays for itself. Give people money so that they can get by when they're out of work. Fund job training. Incentivize businesses to hire more people and people from different backgrounds.

Germany is still facing problems when it comes to unemployment in the former eastern states and when it comes to hiring people form immigrant backgrounds (and women, in a lot of places), but it takes all of these measures and has a reasonable degree of success with them. Unemployment is pretty low on a nation-wide basis and even those places with high unemployment like Berlin have seen improvements over the last 10 years. Critics still like to make these divides, but the truth is that taking this kind of comprehensive approach works. If we can push up wages at the bottom end, we'll be doing quite well, I think.

[thalassa]

Re: Welfare State

They tend to favor a mixed bag - although government incentives to business aren't well understood, so these have been demonized.

I'm all for tax incentives and grants and loans for small businesses. I'm all for investing in things like transportation and infrastructure, which means contracts for small businesses. I'm all for offering tax breaks for company (or individual) investment in renewable energy, sustainability projects like riparian zones for small farmers or business owners with creeks or rivers or wetlands on/bordering their property to protect the watershed where people like to fish and get their drinking water and swim. These things employ people (people who pay taxes and spend money which goes right back to employing more people) and offer a longer term benefit, environmental and economical. I'm even for paying grants and tax breaks for coal mine remediation and tax breaks for selective logging. I'm for (except for those critical pieces of equipment on things like submarines or in fighters or on tanks or in aircraft carrier nuclear reactors) scrapping most of the DoD stock system and letting commands buy a hammer from Home Depot.

What I'm not for is paying (often foreign) companies to build roads in national forests for the express purpose of logging them, sending the logs abroad to be manufactured into furniture, and sent back for sale in the US. Or, ya know, the problem of farm subsidies not going to the right farmers (good gods I can't explain the system its so effed up, so here's a short but okay article)... Or for defense contracting. Or crap, for damn airplanes that the military doesn't want to keep some senator in a seat because it keeps jobs in his district.

Some people are going to be unemployed from stuff like that--or from any change in the economy...which is why we need a system that protects them when they need it, helps retrain them when their industry becomes obsolete, and diversifies their local economies by investing in small businesses rather than multi-national conglomerates so that they have other jobs when the mill shuts down or the mine taps out...and by gods educates the crap out of their children!

Subsidies should be investment in the future not perpetual "welfare" for a corporation pulling a multi-billion dollar profit each year. (off topic, but...I think business majors should be required to take ecology...not for any tree hugging, environmental awareness reasons (ecology as a discipline is surprisingly not fun like that), but because the mathematical models in studying a globally closed and finite system is incredible economic (in the sense that economy is *supposed* to be about the limited nature of resources).)

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Welfare State

I think that's reasonable. People need to know that it isn't the thing itself that is wrong ("handouts to big business"), it's how it is being practiced. The thing doesn't need to be abolished, it needs to be regulated.

Along the same lines, it is popular for people to say things like "that company should have been allowed to fail," as if that would be a good thing. If a large company goes under, the people who loose are not the CEO or Execs. They have their money squirreled away in diversified accounts.

The people who go down are the investors - retired people on a pension, people who have been saving for retirement with IRAs, etc., AND all the employees of the company, and all those who made money servicing them (lunch truck, or local restaurants, for example).

Keeping a company alive is $ by $ a better investment is social stability than any charity work ever done.

[Medusa]

Re: Welfare State

I don't know how it works with all those 'welfare queens' and how they make it through the system. For me, I have to fill out lengthy forms every 6 months. I have to give copies of my pay stubs, my bills, my rent receipts, my bank account, my assets etc. It's pretty damn thorough. So I don't think like people with money are getting welfare. And the amount one household can get max really isn't a lot.

[Rhaethe]

Re: Welfare State

Whilst I will admit I once bought into the hype that "welfare queens" were everywhere ... at this stage in my life, I no longer consider them to have existed in the sheer extent some make them out to be, even if they exist at all.

Here is an interesting article -- http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/23/politics/weflare-queen/

I am amused by the typo in the URL

[DanieMarie]

Re: Welfare State

I'm all for tax incentives and grants and loans for small businesses. I'm all for investing in things like transportation and infrastructure, which means contracts for small businesses. I'm all for offering tax breaks for company (or individual) investment in renewable energy, sustainability projects like riparian zones for small farmers or business owners with creeks or rivers or wetlands on/bordering their property to protect the watershed where people like to fish and get their drinking water and swim. These things employ people (people who pay taxes and spend money which goes right back to employing more people) and offer a longer term benefit, environmental and economical. I'm even for paying grants and tax breaks for coal mine remediation and tax breaks for selective logging. I'm for (except for those critical pieces of equipment on things like submarines or in fighters or on tanks or in aircraft carrier nuclear reactors) scrapping most of the DoD stock system and letting commands buy a hammer from Home Depot.

What I'm not for is paying (often foreign) companies to build roads in national forests for the express purpose of logging them, sending the logs abroad to be manufactured into furniture, and sent back for sale in the US. Or, ya know, the problem of farm subsidies not going to the right farmers (good gods I can't explain the system its so effed up, so here's a short but okay article)... Or for defense contracting. Or crap, for damn airplanes that the military doesn't want to keep some senator in a seat because it keeps jobs in his district.

Some people are going to be unemployed from stuff like that--or from any change in the economy...which is why we need a system that protects them when they need it, helps retrain them when their industry becomes obsolete, and diversifies their local economies by investing in small businesses rather than multi-national conglomerates so that they have other jobs when the mill shuts down or the mine taps out...and by gods educates the crap out of their children!

Subsidies should be investment in the future not perpetual "welfare" for a corporation pulling a multi-billion dollar profit each year. (off topic, but...I think business majors should be required to take ecology...not for any tree hugging, environmental awareness reasons (ecology as a discipline is surprisingly not fun like that), but because the mathematical models in studying a globally closed and finite system is incredible economic (in the sense that economy is *supposed* to be about the limited nature of resources).)

Exactly. Well put.

[Luce]

Re: Welfare State

All I know is, I'd rather my taxes went to things like supporting the most vulnerable members of society than, say, bankers or yet another aircraft carrier. While we're at it, maybe we should listen to the US constitution and maintain the roads (article I, sec 8) and maybe a bridge or three.

You know why people hate on the poor? Because they're an easy target, and because Americans have been conditioned to believe that they're "pre-rich", so they don't want to screw things up for the day when they somehow become wealthy (the mechanism of gaining that wealth being a little murky).

[MaskedOne]

Re: Welfare State

All I know is, I'd rather my taxes went to things like supporting the most vulnerable members of society than, say, bankers or yet another aircraft carrier.

Heresy! One can never have too many aircraft carriers!!!

Err, I'll be good now. I'll also not mention other areas that the military budget might be modified instead. *cough*F-35*cough*

[thalassa]

Re: Welfare State

You know why people hate on the poor? Because they're an easy target, and because Americans have been conditioned to believe that they're "pre-rich", so they don't want to screw things up for the day when they somehow become wealthy (the mechanism of gaining that wealth being a little murky).

This.



...although, I'm a fan of aircraft carriers. The Navy is probably the most functionally useful part of the military during peacetime. Honestly, bring back battleships. They may be tactically obsolete, but they sure don't look it.

[lightdragon]

Re: Welfare State

I don't know how it works with all those 'welfare queens' and how they make it through the system. For me, I have to fill out lengthy forms every 6 months. I have to give copies of my pay stubs, my bills, my rent receipts, my bank account, my assets etc. It's pretty damn thorough. So I don't think like people with money are getting welfare. And the amount one household can get max really isn't a lot.

offhand in Rhaethe's link it pretty much says it all. most people are like you.

Whilst I will admit I once bought into the hype that "welfare queens" were everywhere ... at this stage in my life, I no longer consider them to have existed in the sheer extent some make them out to be, even if they exist at all.

Here is an interesting article -- http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/23/politics/weflare-queen/

I am amused by the typo in the URL

I used to buy into it as well. other stories circulated that they made it easier for Blacks and Hispanics to get it and harder for whites. especially people in college who passed these rumors around and said they got this from social workers. I saw otherwise also.

[nbdy]

Re: Welfare State

I usually steer clear of anything with the word "debate" in it because I much prefer a conversation; however, I think the US is shamed as a country by the way we treat less fortunate members of society. Anyone who wants to have a say about what social services provide need to budget themselves to what they would receive for two months so that they have a clue what they are talking about. I know that a couple of years ago food assistance for a single mother with three children in the DC burbs was about $140 per week. If you all don't know, living here is not cheap. A dozen regular eggs is typically over $3. She had a full time job with an annual income of about $20K, again in an area where a place sufficient for 4 people would be at least $1000 per month, before utilities, childcare so she could work, blah blah blah. That is the scenario I challenge people to reconcile when they start talking smack about this: Please, just as an academic exercise feed, cloth, nurture yourself and your children bringing home these numbers. Then imagine little Johnny needs to go to the dentist and the car needs tires, etc etc. Interestingly, the same people hardly blink at spending over $50K per year incarcerating a non-violent offender. I can't help but think it would be cheaper and easier just to hand the guy $35K each year and maybe he wouldn't feel like he needed to sell dope. (And that is a bit of a joke, so don't get your knickers in a knot.)